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April 27, 2010

Crazy Night At Skydome

The pitching lines for last night's starters were very similar:

Beckett: 3-9-8-3-3, 83 - 21 BFEveland: 3-8-7-3-3, 82 - 20 BF

For Eveland, it was a typical outing against the Red Sox. Before tonight, he had allowed 22 hits and 8 walks in 9.1 innings over three starts. Now it's 30 hits and 11 walks -- 41 baserunners! -- in 12.1 innings.

It was another putrid start from Beckett, who has an ERA of 7.22 after five starts*. John Tomase points out that Beckett has allowed 5+ runs in 30 of his 127 Red Sox starts, roughly one in four.

*: After five starts last April, his ERA was also 7.22. Then something clicked and Beckett had a stretch of 18 starts, over which his ERA was 2.17.

Five Red Sox batters had three hits: Marco Scutaro, Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis, Jason Varitek, and Adrian Beltre. Scutaro scored four times and Varitek knocked in four runs. Youkilis was on base five times. The first four hitters in the order - Scutaro, FY, Yook, Mike Lowell - each batted in the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th innings. Boston was 11-for-20 with RATS.

It's rare that you see anything of note on the big video screen at a game, but early in the game, I read that Youkilis has the 3rd highest OPS among all hitters since the start of 2008. I checked it out and it's true:

Round about the fourth or fifth inning, the drunk guy a section away from us was yelling "Fortier! Fortier!" Maybe he was just babbling -- earlier, after bumping into my arm during a bottleneck in the aisle (I was on the end of the row), he had referred to me twice as Pedroia. I don't know why. It wasn't until maybe the 7th or 8th time he yelled it out that I realized he was referring to Scott Atchison -- #48!

After looking at some video from 2007 and 2008, Manny Declarmen discovered he had shortened his motion, causing a loss of velocity. He retired all six batters he faced last night; opponents are 2-for-32 (.062) this year, though he has walked six men in 10.1 innings.

Also: Lefty Fabio Castro will be called up from Pawtucket today as a fresh arm in the pen; Atchison will be sent down. ... If Alan Embree is not called up by his contract's Friday deadline, he will exercise the opt-out clause. ... The Red Sox signed former Cuban catcher Adalberto Ibarra, 22, to a major league contract worth $3 million over five years.

Elsewhere: Is Ryan Howard's new 5/125 extension (which doesn't even kick in until 2012) baseball's newest "worst contract"? (Jayson Stark writes that only last year the Phillies "balked at any deal longer than three years because they were nervous about how a man with this humongous a frame was going to age".)

A great example, 1993 Toronto at Phillie World Series game 4. 15-14, pouring rain, errors all over the place. Hell to watch if your a stick in the mud like me, but I let it go and enjoyed the spectacle... which we won.

The next game was the exact opposite Curt Schilling pitched a gem, 0-2.

I guess your right, being a good 'contact hitter' or 'hitting for average' doesn't always mean you see a lot of pitches.

Sometimes the pitcher throws the ball in your zone first throw. But, sometimes, you never see it.

Perhaps the stat is better for measuring individuals as opposed to teams, the stat measures a batters ability to adjust, and THAT'S a sign that a batter is a master of the art of hitting.

So why were they're almost 4 games worth of pitches in yesterdays game? I see your point L-girl, bad pitching - not great hitting.

On the other - interesting Allan, you thought game four '93 WS went into extras. I wrote my comment that way, and after checking, made changes. (I see you used Baseball-Reference, I referenced Wikipedia - are we sure both are correct? (joke))